Dawn
by leastauklet
Summary: Ianto's doing his morning chores, when something interrupts them... Jack/Ianto. Only M for brief sex scenes and language. First fic, please review.
1. Chapter 1

Grey light in the sky. Open back door. Pull secret handle. Pull secret handle closed. Use strange alien technology to brew coffee. Feed Myfanwy. Chuck Myfanwy under the chin. That takes a while. Do the filing. They save the universe but they don't think about the mess. Start Tosh's decaf. She taps while I fix things. Sometimes I can go half an hour pulling things apart, wiring, soldering, before I get the warning of Owen coming in. Strong coffee, often aspirin. It's easy to tell from the walk. Gwen's tea, then Jack strolls in and puts his hand out for coffee. They get in within ten minutes of each other unless Jack wants something. In which case he gets in twenty minutes before Tosh. I often have some idea which mornings it will be and I'm never surprised. Not with our systems.

'Morning!' His greatcoat is hung up with a swish, his braces are down. I've already taken off my jacket. His hands are up around my nipples, then one of them is pulling eagerly at my tie, at my belt. I love the feel of him on my arse, his hands sculpting it, his cock reaching for me and the burst of pleasure as he enters me. He pumps energetically, but I know he'll settle into a rhythm soon.

And then he sags before he should, gives a couple of experimental thrusts and says 'Noooo,' like he can't believe it.

As I start to say, 'What? Are you ok? Did I do something wrong?', he touches me lightly on the shoulders and says, 'It's not you.' Big pause. 'It's me.' Taking the piss now would be a very, very bad idea and, in truth, I'm bewildered. This has never happened to me. Not ever. Jack kisses me frantically, squirming his body against mine. It has no effect. He turns me round and looks at me. Owen bursts in and for just a second – I thought I'd imagined it – Jack looks at me with liquid, pleading eyes before going back to his usual grin.

I wish my workmates were surprised by me and the boss with our trousers down, but no one even looks any more. Surprise went out the window sometime last year.

'Tosh's dragged a girl in off the rift,' says Owen. 'She's – Just come look.' The girl is pale, unnaturally pale, completely blonde, wearing a white shift and unconscious. Tosh is struggling under her weight, though she looks like she weighs nothing.

'What happened?'

'I was stood in the Plas when there was a huge rift shift.'

'Nothing down here,' says Owen.

'And she – she formed right in front of me.'

'On the slab,' says Jack, 'Owen!'

Owen goes into his scanning routine, while Tosh, still shaking ever so slightly, mans the computer.

'She has human blood,' says Tosh, 'with – some extras. But –'

'Run her against the species database.'

'Doing that!' says Tosh. 'Uh, nothing.'

Owen starts scanning the brain. If there's trouble it's usually now. The autopsy slab shoots flame, a perfect outline of her body.

'Holy shit!' says Owen, who's dived over the rail and is now lying awkwardly on one shoulder on the floor.

'No rise in temperature,' says Tosh, as we stare at a metal bed on fire. 'In fact, a slight drop.'

I grab the fire extinguisher and let rip. It doesn't put out the fire but it does wake her up. She stands up, blinks once, twice. Her eyes are just pupils, no iris at all. It's like looking at a black hole. I imagine.

I've just realised that I've made myself a target. I'm facing an on-fire alien with a spent fire extinguisher and she's staring at me. I think about hefting the extinguisher at her, but I bet it wouldn't do any good.

'We mean you no harm,' says Gwen, as convincing as always. 'Fire –' she gestures, 'is very dangerous on our world.'

'Fire?' she says, and it's as if it comes from a long way away, a thousand dissonant chords crashing against each other.

Gwen gestures again.

'Oh,' and she switches it off.

Owen lets out the breath he's been holding and shoots the collar of his jacket. He looks around impatiently. It means 'where's my coffee?' so I place the fire extinguisher down gently, make a note in the supplies book and bring his coffee. 'And for you, miss?' I say. She's sniffing his coffee, I mean has her nose right in it while Owen wants to, but doesn't dare, fob her off.

'Coffea arabica, Peruvian, from the Cinco do Mayo plantation, Nor Oriente region,' she says. They all look at me for confirmation. I don't deliberately buy single-estate stuff for Owen, but she's got everything else right.

'You two are made for each other,' Owen jokes, still trying to protect his coffee without annoying her.

'Made for?' she says, and takes a step towards me. Her hands are up at my temples before I can move. The skin is white, with no ridges. They're freezing and, suddenly, my brain is cold between them. It's like she's flicking through a Filofax in my head, events, information, memories go past with dizzying speed. Anything I try to hide is pulled up, looked at and discarded. I get impressions of a place I've never been; two suns, a rainbow of stars across the sky.

'Not made for,' she says and drops me. From the floor – fast turning into the Torchwood staff-friendly option – I see her approach Jack, who says, 'Oh no you don't missy,' and grabs her wrists.


	2. Chapter 2

She flares briefly at him, but he stares her out.

'What are you?' he asks, in his special talking-to-aliens voice.

'Gwawr,' she says.

'It means "dawn",' I tell Jack.

'Is it a name?' he asks. It is.

'A name like that in the local language?' says Jack. 'Not a good sign. What are you?' he asks again.

'Gwawr.'

'Hold on, sir.' I say and speak to her in Welsh.

'What are you?' I ask, and get the same reply.

'You are the dawn?' I ask.

'I am,' she says.

'Why are you the dawn?'

'Because, after me, everything will be reborn.'

I'm definitely agreeing with Jack's 'not good' assessment.

'What?!' says Tosh. I translate.

Then she says the 'reborn' bit, again, in English.

Tosh begins to speak to her in Japanese, and it's obvious from her face she's getting the same answers.

Jack musters some French, but I can tell it's been a while since he used it, then seems to yodel a language at her. 'Gwawr,' she says.

'Human languages only, I think,' says Jack. 'Where are you from?'

No one's surprised when she says something vague: 'A different place.'

'We're not getting anywhere,' says Gwen. 'Try finding out what she does know. Tosh?'

I move away, as Tosh begins to ask simple facts: what's the capital of the United Kingdom? What year is it? She answers fast, with no thinking time. By the time I've moved out of range, Gwawr is pinning down Shakespeare quotations to the right play and scene. I come back several hours later and she's answering questions about rivers in Nepal. Owen's cutting in when he thinks of something medical to ask her. They usually involve very long words, on his part or hers.

'Are we any closer to knowing what she is?' Gwen asks Jack, who's standing over the autopsy bay.

'She knows a lot about us; she's human, but not; and she can create fire at will. Ianto, what happened when she had her hands on your forehead?' I was waiting for someone to get round to that bit.

'She was going through my mind, sir. It was as if she was looking for something.'

'Do you have any idea what it was?' asks Gwen. 'Did she focus on anything in particular?'

'No, it was like she was just – flicking through. She didn't like it when I tried to hide things at the back of my mind, she went after that like a rat down a drainpipe.'

'Er, help?' says a little, but still sarcastic, voice.

Owen's bent back over his chair, head almost touching the desk behind him. Gwawr's hands are clamped round his head. Tosh rushes over to him and tries to pull Gwawr's hand away. Gwen tries that too, on the other side, but neither of them move her at all, even when Gwen dangles her entire body off Gwawr's arm. Jack has his pistol up but I haven't heard him cock it.

Gwawr drops Owen's head onto the desk with a clunk, and looks at the girls like a drunk saying to bouncers 'I'll go quietly now'. They let go, giving it the 'mind that you do'. She whirls round, too fast for Jack. And then it's like they're hugging at arms' length, her at his temples, him with his hands and pistol planted in her chest, and I hear the long slow sound of him cocking the gun.

And like that they stay. Jack isn't going to shoot her for scanning his brain, and she doesn't seem to be doing anything more.

'If she's going to scan his brain, this is going to take a while,' says Owen, helping himself to painkillers and waggling his mug at me for coffee to take them with. 'What with him living forever, or in several dimensions or whatever.'

'You know if you take those you can't drink tonight,' says Tosh, when I come back.

'Tosh,' says Owen. 'I'm a doctor. I know what I'm doing.' Even I can't quite keep the 'yeah right' off my face. 'And yes, I do intend to go out and get a bit drunk tonight, because it's Friday, and that's what people do.'

'But we have to be in tomorrow,' says Tosh. 'We don't get Saturdays off; you may have noticed.' We rarely get Sundays, either, but no one says anything about that.

'Well, in that case, I will take some more of my little friends in the morning,' says Owen.

What looks like becoming a lecture on how we should all get a life is interrupted by a groan from the floor. I go pick up Jack's gun from where it's hanging loosely from his trigger finger, stepping around the barrel carefully. Owen hands me a cold compress to put on Jack's forehead.

'Gwen,' he says thickly. 'Go stand in front of Gwawr.' Gwen does not look keen, but she does it. No reaction. 'Tosh.' No reaction.

'Men,' says Jack. 'Not women. Men.'

'That your new year's resolution?' asks Gwen.

'It's only men,' says Tosh. 'She's looking for a specific man.'

'And we all agree letting her find him is a bad thing?' says Owen.

'We can't let her near any men,' says Tosh. Only Tosh can deliver a line like that without a smile.

'Bit like you, Jack,' says Gwen, and he smirks and peels himself off the floor.

'I think we should put her in the cells to be on the safe side,' says Jack and then flexes his entire body including his face. 'Wow. There were some good bits in there I'd forgotten.'

'Human food, sir?' I say. He nods. Gwawr comes quietly, which makes a nice change, with no more attempts to scan me. I put her a long way from the weevils, down at the far end, take her some dinner and do all the things I have to do before I can leave.

She's still there in the morning, just arranged on the floor, asleep. The white of her shines through the CCTV as bright green, so I turn the contrast down a touch, check the weevils are sleeping and start on the coffee.

I'm not the least bit surprised when Jack is in early.

I can feel the hesitation as he enters me, the slight shake of his body as he worries it will happen again. But everything goes to plan, and when we've finished, I can see all over his face that he's relieved. In both senses. This time we're not disturbed, and there's time to hold each other before I have to put Tosh's coffee on.

I knock up a cooked breakfast, surprising Jack and Tosh with warm plates, and take one down to the cells. The weevils bare their teeth at me as I walk along the corridor.

'Bore da, Gwawr!' I say, before I get to the cell at the end. 'I brought you breakfast.' I say, opening the hatch.

I'm about to shovel in the food when I notice the cell is dark. She's not there. It's empty.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood.

I'm walloping the alarm bell before I know what I'm doing. I'm not armed, and that's starting to make me twitchy. I turn round and about, peering into corners, still calling 'Gwawr,' as if she's a cat that's slipped under the furniture.

Jack flies in, pistol raised, and skids on the eggs I didn't realise I'd dropped. He slams against the end wall, his greatcoat giving one big flap before he stops. 'What the…?!' he yells, then realises he needs to stop fussing about the eggs because we have an empty cell.

'She formed in front of Tosh!' he says. 'Stupid, stupid, stupid!' And run backs upstairs.

'A cellbreak?' says Owen, who's not had time to take his coat off. 'Again? I don't know why we bother.'

'She's some kind of shapechanger, some kind of elemental force. The dawn, the light, the fire!' yells Jack, running towards the door.

'It's not going to be good when she finds what she wants, is it?' says Gwen.

As we run out, Owen grabs the rest of the bacon.

'I'm guessing, I'm just guessing, something along the lines of the entire city catching fire,' says Jack. 'Been there, done that, not a lot of fun.' And he guns the car.

'Owen,' I say. 'Don't eat bacon in the car.' Owen rips the fat off his – my – bacon and drops it out the window, before shoving the rest of it in his gob.

Gwen leans forward and says 'I think Ianto will kill you if you wipe your fingers on the upholstery.' She's right. 'Okay, what does she want?' adds Gwen.

'A man,' says Owen. Tosh and Gwen have a half-hearted joke about that, but Tosh's fingers are busy. Short of thinking our way into the mind of what – at best guess – is some kind of elemental lifeform, tracking her's our best bet.

'If you wanted to find a man in a hurry…' says Gwen.

'I wait for them to come to me,' says Jack.

'If you wanted to find a lot of men,' says Owen.

Jack turns his head to grin at him.

'JACK!' yells Gwen as we hurtle towards some shoppers. Jack flicks the wheel one way then the other, flinging us against each other in the back. Gwen is bracing herself against the window. 'J-ack, the rest of us aren't immortal.'

'We're fine, we're fine,' he says, 'Come on Tosh, where am I going?'

'Take a right here,' says Tosh. Jack never seems to tire of handbrake turns. Tosh continues to direct Jack through an ordinary looking housing estate, until we turndown a bumpy two-track lane.

'What is this?' I ask, unsuccessfully craning my head to see the painted sign mounted on the wall. That we've just flown past.

Tosh touches the map. 'Rugby club.'

'Lots of men,' says Jack, gleefully. I don't think filling him in on rugby, masculinity and their often not being keen on people like me and him is going to do any good.

Somehow I know I'm going to ruin my shoes. Lucky I'm sleeping with the man who signs my expenses.

'Ok, no guns unless we have to,' says Jack.

He skids to a stop and we all jump out. Jack hurdles the rope around the pitch and starts to run. We all follow. It's a rugby pitch, and it's late February. It's like treacle. I eventually get some purchase and set off after him.

There's a match on the far pitch. The referee is blowing his whistle frantically and shouting 'Get that woman off the pitch! Get that woman off the pitch!' More than half the backs from the team nearest us are lying on the floor in various stages of confusion. The fullback, who must've been first, shows signs of getting up, but as we watch, she goes for the no10 and does the hands-to-temples thing. The no9 reckons that he's next and starts to peg it up the pitch. The ref comes running over to her, puts his arm up, blows his whistle in her face and says 'Off the pitch, MADAM!' Her hands go up. He looks puzzled, then pleased, then puzzled again, then crumbles to the floor, the whistle trailing away from his mouth.

I fling him not very gently into the recovery position and then run after Jack, who's running after Gwawr, who's running after the no9, who is, I think its safe to say, shit-scared.

Jack takes her down with a fine tackle, but she bursts into flame. The shock of it again is enough to confuse him and she slips out of it, catching the no9, who wriggles desperately. She just pulls him off the ground and scans him as his feet flap against her shins.

Something happens. His body goes rigid, then she tucks him under her arm and runs for the clubhouse. We follow; on a look from Jack, guns drawn. We'll worry about witnesses later.

She slams the door on us. Jack is about to kick it in when a light as strong and as steady as an acetylene flare shines around it. Everything else goes dark.

A/N: This review stuff's addictive isn't it? Let me know what you think.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack kicks the door in anyway.

The no9's body is disappearing in a blaze of light, head back, mouth open in ecstasy or terror, I can't tell. What was Gwawr is the light, half-humanoid, pressed against him, with tendrils of light everywhere. One of them snakes towards me, passes me in a flash and a sensation of extreme heat and then is gone. I back up. Jack backs up too. The others are backed up so far they're outside the door.

Then there's the growl of a thousand voices, the light shrinks in an instant to the size of a marble and zips past us. The no9's body, still twitching, hits the floor.

'He's alive,' says Owen.

'Take him back to the Hub,' says Jack and orders me to sort the retconning before they leave.

I lever up the beer hatch and drop into the dusty cellar. I detach the lines, open the barrels and drop in the pills. Retconning is like making tea - you need one less teabag, or pill, than there are people. They'll think they just had a heavy night. They troop in – match abandoned – and while they drink I tell them tales of rugby derring-do, mostly whatever I can remember from Wales matches. Then I have a round of cheery handshakes, leave them with the impression I was a linesman, and drive back to the Hub.

'Fucking hell!' I shout. 'I've told you not to touch my fucking archives!' Papers are scattered all over the floor, artefacts abandoned on any convenient shelves, the K'rillizian morphic n'ntng on the floor.

'Do you have any idea what would've happened if you'd broken this?!' I demand, holding up the n'ntng at Owen, who is, of course, mostly responsible.

'Do you know what's going to happen with Gwawr now?' says Owen.

'No,' I say, picking up the papers and beginning to flick them back into alphabetical order.

'Then don't you think we should find out quickly?'

'Look under 347.14,' I say. 'Also try 545.29 and there might be something useful in the 1924 archives under E.' They all look at me, then file out of the archives. 'I'll do it, then.' I mutter to myself.

I nearly shout out and then I think I'll just read it first. It's the 1924 archives, and I feel a little fillip when I see the angular initials in the top right hand corner ABE. Aled Bryn Evans.

I met him once, at the very end of his life, his mind still sharp, his humour just below the surface and his voice telling on and on of all the things he had seen. But in 1924 he was young and the sense of wonder drifts off the page.

He begins dry, the listing of the phenomena, the things they saw. But towards the end he begins to speculate: 'Humanoid, even caring, but with no colour. It's as if they model themselves on us, but they never quite get it right. It's as if they just pour wax into a mould.'

I pull the cross references, and begin to sort them into the most logical order: medical notes for Owen, algorithms that need running down for Tosh. Then I find something that might mean something to Jack, mark it with a little tag and leave it on his desk.

He notices me as I cross the Hub and brings the team up to his office.

'Ianto?'

'We have some time,' I say.

'How much?' asks Jack.

I look at my watch. 'Twelve hours.'

'Dawn?' asks Tosh.

'How convenient,' says Owen.

'That's the good news, isn't it?' says Gwen.

'Don't start with the good news, Ianto, start with the bad news,' says Jack.

'She's gestating.'

'Oh fucking great,' says Owen.

I press on. 'She will have babies. It's hard to know how many, but we're not talking five or six. Each of these babies will have the same powers, for want of a better word, as Gwawr. Each of them will be seeking a world in which to reproduce.'

'How are they going to do that?' asks Tosh.

'Er, it looks like they're going to hurtle themselves at the Rift until it gives and then take potluck.'

'Can we leave them to it?' asks Gwen.

'It won't be that simple,' says Owen.

Jack says slowly, 'There's no way that the Rift can take that much disturbance at once. They could just blow the whole thing wide open.'

'Essentially, sir, yes.' I say.

'How did they stop them the first time?' asks Gwen.

'They shot them.' I say.

'Well, that's easy enough,' says Owen.

I add, 'One of the operatives had to climb into the Rift and hold it shut,'

'You can do that?' asks Gwen.

'In very, very special circumstances,' says Jack.

'Such as?'

'Being prepared to die.'

'I think we're ahead of the game there,' says Owen.

'Where dying means your atoms being pulverised and reforming in a different dimension. Where it means you can't come back.' I say.

I can feel that everyone is avoiding looking at Jack. I'm certainly not doing it.

'Let's come up with a better plan, then,' he says. 'Ianto, you have the medical notes? Owen, you take those, Gwen you look into the 'mate', uh –'

'Harri Griffiths.'

'Tosh, you examine the Rift patterns for anything that might help us.'

'Says here,' says Owen, having grabbed his notes and sashayed over to Jack's desk. 'Can cause loss of sexual appetite in people other than the designated partner.' I don't look at Jack. 'That's what I call a side effect,' says Gwen.

'It's not quite morning glory, is it?' says Owen.

Then I look at Jack. He has a huge grin on his face and runs his fingers across my shoulders on the way out.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood

Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood.

We're too busy for a shag, though I'm sure Jack would say there's no such thing.

Tosh is trying everything she can think of track Gwawr down, alternatively grabbing at her hair and stabbing at her keyboard. I'm frantically cross-referencing everything we have on elementals, periodically breaking off to pass around the elixir of life. Or coffee, as it's sometimes known.

The phone rings. We all stop. It's the landline, the one that never rings. I pick it up and say 'Torchwood, Ianto Jones speaking.'

'Phillips!' the voice cuts across me. UNIT. 'What the bloody hell are you lot playing at?' At 'hell', Jack's mobile goes, then Gwen's, then Gwen's other mobile. Gwen fumbles the second one to Owen and answers the first, 'Yes detective Swanson, yes, we have the matter in hand.' She looks at Jack and pulls a face. He makes a worse one back at her, because he's busy saying, 'Yes, Prime Minister, yes I quite understand, Prime Minister'. Owen is talking into Gwen's phone, 'Yes, Mrs Cooper, yes, Gwen is fine, it's just an abnormal power surge, um, yeah, she's in the loo right now'.

Phillips, a Valleys boy, is shouting in my left ear: 'There is a fucking big light over Cardiff. And I want it sorted. NOW. People are noticing!'

I say, 'Yes, sir,' and put the phone down.

Gwen puts her hand over her phone and asks, 'Did you calm my mam down?' Owen shrugs.

We're all already moving towards the door, guns cocked. For all the good that'll do, because we have no plan. I look at Jack, but I don't think he has one either.

As we step outside, Cardiff is bathed in that eerie light of a full, bright moon. But the moon is a fingernail hanging over the bay, and the light comes from the heart of the city.

We jump into the SUV.

'My – bloody! – tracker is on the fritz,' says Tosh, slapping the side of her screen.

Gwen says, 'We'll do it by eye,' and rolls down her window. So I'm half out of the window keeping my eye on the light in the sky as the car skids around Cardiff's streets shouting 'Left! Right! No, straight!' Of all the apocalypses I've nearly been a part of, this is the weirdest.

'Over the Wales & West Insurance building!' shouts Gwen, 'Jesus, that's bright!'

We screech up to the twenty-story tower in the centre of town. We all try to look up, but recoil because it's just so bright. I shut my eyes as fast as I can but it glows like a red globe through my eyelids. When we talk, it's at each other's chins, except Tosh, who has to talk to everyone's chests.

Owen takes out his sunglasses and snaps them on.

'Bloody poser,' says Gwen.

'Hope there's no afterbirth,' he says, ignoring her. 'Could be a bit messy.'

'One thing at a time, Owen,' says Gwen.

'Why is it always the fucking roof?' asks Owen.

'She probably needs to be near the sky,' says Jack. 'Let's get up there.'

Owen runs in and starts jabbing at the lift button.

'Hang on,' says Gwen. 'There's no lights. I think she's fried the electrics.'

'Bollocks bollocks bollocks!' mutters Owen and doesn't let up for three flights.

It's pitch dark, my heart's pounding in my ears every time I slow down and I jar my leg on to every landing because I'm expecting an extra step.

A particularly loud 'Bollocks!' tells me Owen's just done the same thing.

It begins to get light. I look up, now that I can, and there's four floors left. My guess is light's coming round the door at the top. A lot of light.

When we get to three floors to go, there's a huge flare. We run faster even though I don't think it's possible and I draw on all the reserves of energy I have. Jack bangs through the door. We follow in formation. I'm shaking so hard my gun sights jump and sway as I try to sight. I suck air in – warm air – and try to hold it in to steady myself, like I've been taught. It doesn't work.

Gwawr's hovering, her body engorged on light. The heat on our faces is like standing next to a bonfire. Owen looses off a shot. The bullet seems to disappear when it hits Gwawr's body, and she doesn't flinch. Another flare, then I'm trying to look at her as my vision strobes with colour.

'Thought it might work,' shrugs Owen, as we all glare at him.

'Doesn't bode well for being able to shoot the babies,' says Gwen. Another flare, then another and another. We're on the floor, desperately shading our eyes, feeling the roof start to go sticky in the heat, as my back begins to burn. The flares come faster and stronger, then an almighty scream. Then nothing. We wait, convinced there's another flare coming. I'm waiting for my body to give up, to refuse to go on, to lose its grip on life in the heat. Then there's a buzzing noise, a very faint buzzing noise, getting closer and closer. I have to look up. There's a sphere of orange light over me, a tiny doll-like humanoid inside. I look into its black eyes and it blinks.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood.

The globe shatters with a whine. I look down to see a shard of light pierce me. There's no pain.

'Are you ok?' shouts Gwen.

'Yeah… yeah…' I say, distractedly, patting my stomach where it went through.

'It – it – ' gibbers Owen.

'It went right through you,' said Tosh. Sometimes she's the steely one.

'Didn't feel a thing.'

'Owen! You have no idea what could've happened!' shouts Jack.

'It's dead though,' says Owen, 'First problem solved.'

'Er,' says Gwen, the kind of 'er' where you look up very quickly.

There are more of them, floating around the rooftop like bubbles bobbing in the breeze.

There's a click as Owen cocks his gun.

'Anyone not think this is a good idea?' he asks.

'Go for it,' says Jack, cocking his own. The whine of bullets drowns in a shriek. Gwawr flies towards us, screaming. I use my left arm to cover my head and fire anywhere. I feel the skin on my forearm blister as she swoops over my head. Gwen is firing up at her desperately, and it seems to beat her back, but it certainly doesn't stop her.

I bite my lip, say 'sorry' to her in my head and take aim at the nearest baby. The screech gets louder, which I didn't think was possible, and it clangs inside my head and goes on and on and on.

Tosh yells something in Jack's ear, but I can't hear it, just see her move her arms as she makes her point. He nods stagily at her and she runs to the door.

I fall back and yell 'What?'

'She's gone to get the mate! Thinks he might be able to reverse it!' I'm reading his lips, rather than hearing anything, though he's yelling his lungs out.

'Will it work?'

'Might do!' he says shortly.

Gwen racks in another clip and keeps firing.

We join Owen in shooting desperately at the babies that keep coming. The globes shatter and skitter across the rooftop and I jump to avoid them because they look so real, so sharp. Owen gives me a look that says 'What are you doing?' but it's reflex.

Then there's one left. It's my bullet that punctures the globe, and it seems to shatter in slow motion, the shards sliding towards me like they're on ice. I stand there, exhausted, let them pass through me, feeling sick and almost giddy with relief. But I have to force myself to look at Gwawr. She's pulsing white and violet, and her face, what's left of it, is in a permanent 'O' of pain. It's as if she's just waiting, letting the pulses come through her.

We stop. There's nothing to fight. Owen and Gwen and Jack and I look at each other. Owen looks like he's about to make a quip but a little hand-motion from Gwen stops him. The only sound from Gwawr is a low humming.

'Look,' says Gwen, shielding her eyes and looking east. 'It's starting to get light.'

'It would be good –really good – if Tosh is back before then,' says Jack, touching his comm. 'Tosh, report!'

'Bottom of the stairs, nearly there.'

My heart makes itself heard again, starts to pump in my ears again. The sun's coming up, and as it does I hope that this might not be a disaster, that this might pass without us having to kill her, kill anything else.

Not having to retcon half of Cardiff would be nice too, but you can't have everything.

As the first rays shoot across the city, the rift starts to unravel across the roof.

Jack goes to touch his comm again, then obviously figures there's nothing he can say to Tosh that would make her run faster.

The door bursts open, and it's Harri, the no9, the mate.

'Said you needed me,' he says, bent double and breathing hard. Jack looks at Gwen. Whether he knows that she'll say what has to be said or knows this is a job for a pretty girl, I don't know. She gives him a despairing glance.

'Hello, Harri, is it? I'm Gwen.'

Get on with it, I'm thinking, we screw this up, or do it too late, and no one's name's going to matter.

'We need you to reconnect with Gwawr – '

Harri looks up, disbelieving.

'This is – Gwawr?' he asks. He doesn't say it as a name, just looks up, wondering what she is_. _'What do I have to do?' He's shit-scared, I can see it, but he's trying to hold it together.

'We don't really know,' says Gwen. Jack and I look at each other. Not the right thing to say. 'Can you just walk into her?'

'Walk into THAT?' Gwen gives him her best 'trust us' look.

I hope this works. I really, really hopes this works.

He takes a first step towards her, a very slow, small, shaky one, then another. Her if it has to be, I think, but not a human. Then he puts his shoulders back, shuts his eyes, and walks quickly into the light, his mouth opening as the heat hits him, keeping his eyes squeezed shut, telling himself whatever he has to tell himself to stay in there.

Gwawr starts to howl again, deeper this time, and the light goes pure white.

Oh fuck, I think, we've made it worse.

But the light is diminishing, it's as if she's getting sucked back into the rift. The light spreads sideways along the line of the rift and with a final flash, is gone.

The light disappears and she's lying in front of me, just her. I think she's dying in front of me, too.

I take her hand, kneel on the concrete beside her, can't stop myself crying, can feel her pulse beat through her hand, weaker and weaker, stuttering.

I know she's going and I can't stop it. I just press her hand uselessly, and get a final squeeze, a sudden shot of that rainbow sky again, and I know that's it.

They let me cry for a bit, though I can feel them hovering over me. In the end, Jack puts his hand on my shoulder, and I feel I should stand up.

I look over at Harri, flat on his back, drained. I think he's alive. I look at Jack, and Jack gives me the glance that says 'Retcon'.

I go to take my jacket off, but Owen stops me. 'You'll peel your skin off with it,' he says, part relish, part concern.

'He's ok?' I ask, pointing at Harri.

'He's banged up, but he's breathing,'

'Saved the world again, kids,' says Jack, bouncy again.

'Anyone else getting sick of it?' asks Gwen.

Jack gives her a sideways glance but doesn't say anything.

'Yeah,' says Owen. 'Sling him the retcon,' he says to me.

Fingers shaking, the skin on my arm blistering, I push the retcon into his gob and feel the afterkick of adrenaline.

'Painkiller,' I say, and turn away, and watch the sky turn light grey.

A/N: Sorry it took so long. All except the last seven lines have been done for months, I was very stuck. Thanks, as ever, to ggfuatuiwwgiac for general encouragement. I'd love to know what you think.


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